Data from: Information use and resource competition: an integrative framework

Organisms may reduce uncertainty regarding how best to exploit their environment by collecting information about resource distribution. We develop a model to demonstrate how competition can facilitate or constrain an individual’s ability to use information when acquiring resources. Since resource distribution underpins both selection on information use and the strength and nature of competition between individuals, we demonstrate interdependencies between the two that should be common in nature. Individuals in our model can search for resources either personally or by using social information. We explore selection on social information use across a comprehensive range of ecological conditions, generalising the producer-scrounger framework to a wide diversity of taxa and resources. We show that resource ecology – defined by scarcity, depletion rate, and monopolisability – determines patterns of individual differences in social information use. These differences suggest co-evolutionary processes linking dominance systems and social information use, with implications for the evolutionary demography of populations.

生物可通过收集资源分布相关信息，降低关于如何最优开发自身生存环境的不确定性。我们构建了一个模型，用以阐释竞争在个体获取资源的过程中，如何促进或制约其利用信息的能力。鉴于资源分布既是信息利用选择压力的基础，也是个体间竞争强度与竞争本质的决定因素，我们证明了二者间的相互依赖关系，这类关系在自然界中应属普遍现象。本模型中的个体可通过两种方式搜寻资源：个人独立搜寻或利用社会信息。我们在全面多样的生态条件下探究了社会信息利用的选择压力，并将生产者-偷窃者（producer-scrounger）框架推广至各类群生物与多样资源场景。研究表明，由资源稀缺性、消耗速率与可垄断性所定义的资源生态学特征，决定了社会信息利用中的个体差异模式。这些差异暗示了支配体系与社会信息利用之间存在协同进化过程，该过程对种群的进化种群统计学特征具有重要意义。